“It’s a technical term,” Hamnet explained, not unkindly. “It means, well, no.”
“You can’t say that!” Gunnlaug burst out. “His Majesty commands it!”
“Listen carefully. Watch the way my lips move. . . No.”
“But you can’t disobey the Emperor,” Gunnlaug Jofrid said, as if it were a law of nature.
“Oh, I can’t, eh? I’m afraid we’ll just have to see about that,” Hamnet said.
“What will you do? Where will you go? Every man’s hand will be raised against you, all over the Empire.”
“Then I’ll leave,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I’ve done it before. His Majesty won’t be sorry to see me do it again.”
Gunnlaug looked doubtful, to say the least. “That’s not what my orders say. And how do I know you’ll really do it, anyhow? How do I know you won’t turn around and go somewhere and raise a rebellion? That would be worth my neck.”
He wasn’t wrong. He was, in fact, bound to be right. “Well, you can come with me,” Hamnet suggested. “Then you’ll be able to say you saw me ride up onto the Bizogot plain with your own eyes.”
“You’d rather go up there than down to Nidaros?” Gunnlaug seemed to have trouble believing his ears.
“If I go down to Nidaros, Sigvat will either throw me back in the dungeon or kill me,” Count Hamnet said. “If I go up into the Bizogot country, maybe the Rulers will kill me. But maybe they won’t, too. And at least I’ll be able to fight back. Any which way, I’m better off. Is that plain enough, or shall I get a stick of charcoal and some parchment and draw you a picture?”
“You’re making fun of me!” Gunnlaug Jofrid’s voice went shrill.
Hamnet looked at Runolf Skallagrim. “Nothing gets by him, does it?” Gunnlaug spluttered indignantly. Ignoring him, Count Hamnet went on, “Sorry this is awkward for you.”
“I can see how you might not want to meet the chopper just yet – or any time at all, to tell you the truth,” Runolf said.
“If you think I’m going to go to the back of beyond with you -” Gunnlaug began.
“The other choice is killing you right now,” Hamnet Thyssen broke in. The courier shut up with a snap. Hamnet eyed Runolf again. “I didn’t know I was so persuasive.”
“Maybe I’d better stash the poor fellow in the guardhouse till you’re ready to leave,” Runolf said. “Wouldn’t want him complicating your life even worse than it is already, would we?”
“This is an outrage!” Gunnlaug said. “An outrage, I tell you! When the Emperor finds out what you’ve done -” He broke off.
Had Count Hamnet the courier’s boots, he would have stopped some time sooner. The snow wouldn’t melt for months up here. A body that went into a drift wouldn’t see the light of day till spring, and spring came late in these parts. Hamnet wondered whether he could afford to take the courier along. If the fellow kept trying to escape . . Well, there was plenty of snow up in the forest, too.
“Do stick him in the guardhouse, Runolf,” Hamnet said. “That will give me time to see who all wants to come along and to load pack horses. Easier than running off before we’re ready.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Runolf promised, and he did.
Hamnet rode out of Kjelvik the next day. Marcovefa rode with him. So did Ulric Skakki. Audun Gilli and Liv came out side by side. Trasamund went along, as did a few of the other Bizogots. Most of the Leaping Lynxes who still lived stayed behind, though, judging their chances better inside the Empire than back up on the frozen steppe. Hamnet Thyssen had to hope they were wrong.
Also accompanying his band was Gunnlaug Jofrid. The imperial courier said, “Do you really imagine you can get away with this?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Count Hamnet answered. “I can’t believe Sigvat will send an army up into the Bizogot country after me. Can you?”
“He’d better not!” Trasamund rumbled. “He’d better not even think about it, by God! We’d swarm down into Raumsdalia and tear his precious Empire up by the roots if he tried. The very idea!” He snorted in disgust.
Ulric Skakki snorted, too, though quietly. An amused smile played over his features for a moment. Hamnet understood why: poor Trasamund had forgotten something. With the Bizogot clans shattered by the Rulers, the big blonds would swarm into the Empire only as refugees, or perhaps as vassals and hirelings of the mammoth-riders. The Bizogots’ independent power would be a long time reviving, if it ever did.
The Rulers were still trickling down into Raumsdalia. Count Hamnet s band rode past several small groups of them even before it reached the edge of the woods. Hamnet led enough men to make the Rulers think twice about quarreling with him. He wasn’t sure whether that pleased Trasamund or disappointed him.
Plunging into the forest again felt strange. Not far ahead lay the clearing where his army had battled the Rulers to a standstill. . till that one unlucky slingstone took Marcovefa out of the fight and let the wizards from beyond the Glacier use the spells she’d blocked up till then.
She didn’t remember much about what had gone on here. Hamnet doubted she ever would. He’d seen that loss of memory before in people who’d taken blows to the head. More often than not, it was a mercy.
Marcovefa didn’t look at it that way. “I want to know what I did!” she complained. “I want to know what all they magicked at me. I want to know what I magicked at them. I know I was doing good – these Rulers are not so tough. But I want to know!”
“Maybe . .” Hamnet Thyssen had to pause, because talking while he was gritting his teeth was hard. He made himself unclench his jaw and go on: “Maybe you could ask Liv and Audun Gilli. If anyone on our side knows, they’re the ones.”
Marcovefa kissed him. That made him glad he’d said what he had; he hadn’t thought anything could. “I do that!” she said. She rode over to the Raumsdalian wizard and the Bizogot shaman. Count Hamnet turned his head and looked the other way. He could suggest it, but he couldn’t like it.
She was still talking with them when Hamnet s band came to the battlefield. Ravens flew away, croaking like big, black frogs. A short-faced bear looked up from a meal of . . well, Hamnet hoped the beast was eating a dead warrior of the Rulers. The bear growled a warning at the newcomers. When they took no notice of it, it loped away, long legs carrying it off at least as fast as a horse could trot.
Marcovefa came back to Count Hamnet. Yes, she does now – but for how long? he wondered. Would he ever be able to get these doubts out of his head? She said, “This is where we fought?”
“That’s right.” He nodded.
“I remember the place. I remember the – the mammoths.” She had to cast about for the word. “I remember the fear the foe threw. But even after I talk, I don’t remember the fight.” She slammed a fist down on her thigh in frustration. “I want to!”
“I don’t know what to do about that,” Hamnet said, in lieu of, I don’t think anyone can do anything about that
They pressed on to the north. A strange truce held whenever they passed bands of Rulers coming down into Raumsdalia. Once, a fellow who was pretty plainly a wizard stared at Marcovefa. Even in her damaged state, he knew her for what she was. When she bared her teeth at him in what was almost a smile, he flinched. The Rulers were made of stern stuff, whatever else you said about them; that didn’t happen every day.
The trees began to thin out. The customs post at the tree line was a burned ruin. To the north, as far as the eye could see – and, Hamnet knew, far beyond that – stretched the snow-covered, gently rolling terrain of the Bizogot steppe.
“Here we are again,” he said to Ulric Skakki.
“Never loses its charm, does it?” the adventurer returned.
“How can you lose what you haven’t got?” Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric laughed.
XXII
Gunnlaug Jofrid rode back towards the south. Count Hamnet didn’t much want to let him go; he feared the courier would land Runolf Skallagrim in trouble. But the only other choice did seem to be slaughtering Gunnlaug, and Hamnet didn’t have the stomach for it, not in cold blood.